art to communicate

I finished My Name is Asher Lev tonight. My head is swimming, as per usual when I read this one. The book itself feels like a masterpiece of the same nature as its subject.

The book explores art, in the context of painting and drawing and the visual arts. I appreciate the continued use of the term “art,” as it opens the door to comparison of my own art, and that of every reader this book could have.

My art form is writing. Sometimes writing music. Sometimes writing with words. Sometimes both. Asher Lev's is painting. His father's is traveling. His mother's is selfless suffering for the preservation of her family. In all of them it is their Judaism – even in Asher Lev, although he isn’t devout in all the same ways as his community.

To write honestly, must one write everything? Naturally, no. One must not write that which does not add to the work. Still, one must include everything that is pertinent and essential. Which works are important? That which runs deepest? In the final pages, Asher expresses – maybe in wonder, in “quiet desperation” of what is – the power in his painting hand. The power in that hand to amuse, to cause pain, to channel what is regardless of what may fight to keep it inside. So that power lies in the fingers of one who writes.

To communicate. To take your gift and use it for the edification of those who experience it. I have learned that that which edifies is not always enjoyable. God does not always teach through happy lessons and painless moments. Edification is the enlargement of a soul to greater understanding of truth. Truth is not always happy, but its alternative is useless, and that which is useless does not lead one to the eventual fulfillment (and joy) that comes from the work one can do with truth.

So a gift, as Asher discovers through the conviction of his teacher Jacob Kahn and then through his own experience, must be used as a vehicle for truth – the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Which stories must be told? Those which edify. Those which are a truth that needs telling, and not one iota more or less. More creates embellishment; less creates a half-truth which in so becoming has no integrity, either.

--

“These are my memories, Papa. No, I'm not saying that these paintings represent the truth; they represent how I feel about things I remembered when I was in Paris. They're not the truth, Papa; but they're not lies, either.”(p. 359-360)

“Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.” -- Picasso